Durant saw that, while he had been thinking, the cars had stopped. He saw a large detached house surrounded by a rain-soaked lawn which in turn was surrounded by a high iron fence. A Picked Guard was opening the gate. The night was so dark that Durant could get only a confused impression of the house, looming against the pouring sky. A window or two was lighted. He got out of his car, and, surrounded by his ubiquitous guards, he walked to the house and entered it as the door opened. He found himself in a small severe vestibule, where the Chief Magistrate was waiting for him.
Arthur Carlson dismissed the guards with a quick gesture, and he and Durant were alone. He gave Durant a slight smile, and then his eyes sharpened. “Has anything happened?” he asked.
Durant said: “I’ve just heard about Mr. Reynolds’—accident.”
“Yes. Unfortunate, wasn’t it?” The cold smile shone for a moment in Carlson’s eyes. “Some fanatic, no doubt. Who else would give up his own life like that?” He took Durant’s arm with a friendly gesture, opened the door and led him into a large and pleasant room, softly lit with lamps. A log fire burned on a brick hearth, and a semi-circular sofa faced it. A woman sat on the sofa, and she turned her head with a smile when the two men approached her. Durant was taken aback, for this pretty woman with the dark-blue eyes and black hair, and clad in a charming gray dress, was Captain Alice Steffens.
She gave her white hand to Durant, and the jeweled rings on it sparkled. “How are you, Colonel?” she asked, and smiled again. “It is colonel now, isn’t it?” Durant sat down beside her, and stared. This amused her, and she began to laugh. She glanced up at Arthur Carlson, who was standing near her, and the blue eyes glowed.
“Yes, Alice, it’s ‘colonel’ now,” replied the Chief Magistrate. He looked down at the girl and there was a change in his expression, tender yet withdrawn. He turned quickly to Durant and said: “Alice is one of us, as you’ve probably guessed.”
“Department of Women’s Welfare,” said Durant unkindly, thinking of the barracks he had recently passed, and annoyed for some obscure reason.
Alice touched his arm briefly, and laughed again. “Colonel of the Army of The Democracy,” she added. Her face sparkled a little mockingly, as if she found him amusing. Her round white neck was like satin in the firelight. She was all feminine assurance and gaiety, and a sweet perfume hovered over her, a tangible excitement.
“Is your name really Steffens, Captain?” asked Durant, who had begun to watch Carlson with curiosity and understanding.
She smiled. Carlson said quietly: “Is that question necessary, Colonel?”
“No.” Durant, embarrassed, began to glance about the room. The lamps were concentrated in the center, so that shifting shadows filled the corners. In one of these distant corners sat a man, silently smoking. It was hard to see him clearly, but Durant caught an impression that this man was very thin and tall and not young, and that he had a distinguished narrow face and long legs. He puffed at his pipe, the bowl of which he kept in his hand. In spite of the dimness, Durant felt a strength and gentleness in this stranger, and immense intelligence.
Carlson said: “We have another guest, Colonel. Alice’s father, Mr. Steffens. Mr. Steffens, Colonel Curtiss.”
Mr. Steffens nodded, and said: “Good evening, Colonel.” Durant stammered something in return. He liked the sound of Mr. Steffens’ voice, for it was strong and gentle and full of thoughtful control. He tried to see the other man’s face more directly, but the hand holding the pipe partially concealed it. However, Durant’s face was illuminated by lamps and firelight, and it was evident that Mr. Steffens was studying him.
Carlson asked: “Wine or whiskey, Colonel?” He walked to a table on which stood four glasses and two bottles. “Whiskey,” replied Durant. He added, inanely, for he was becoming uncomfortable under the scrutiny of Mr. Steffens: “You live here, Captain—I mean, Miss Steffens?”
She nodded graciously. “Yes, Colonel. But my father does not live here.” She was no longer smiling. She sighed. When Carlson gave her a glass of wine her fingers touched his, and lingered. He removed them, quickly, and brought Durant his glass. He sat down, but not too near Alice. He said: “It’s usually unwise to let our members know each other, but I thought you ought to know who Alice is, Colonel. For the tempo of our work will have to increase rapidly. It will soon be now or never. You can assist Alice, and she can assist you. She has been telling me that the mothers under her immediate jurisidiction are becoming more and more desperate as their younger girls are removed from them and sent into farm labor camps and factories. Some of their letters to their children have been confiscated. And found ‘subversive.’ Alice has the idea of spiriting the girl-children away so that their mothers won’t know their whereabouts, and this will make them frantic.”
Alice said, with sadness: “I think it’s very necessary to do so, if the women of this country are to revolt soon. Of course, unknown to them, we are keeping a file system of the children’s addresses, and the children will be restored to their mothers at the proper time.”
“It was the women of Paris, and not the men, who tore down the Bastille,” said Mr. Steffens comfortingly.
“All this pain, all this misery,” murmured Alice restively.
“We didn’t make it. We are trying to destroy it,” said Carlson, in a cold and reproving voice. “The people willed it, and we’re trying to rescue them from their own wretchedness, and their own stupidity. We’re goading them into action. If we fail—and we might very well fail, considering the mentality of the majority of men—we’ve done our best. We have our own leaders ready when the time comes, and we have thousands of anonymous men and women all over the country quietly inciting the people.” His words were reasonable enough, but they were icy with contempt. “I sometimes wonder if the people are worth our efforts.” He stared grimly at the fire. “We’ve lost two hundred good men in the past two months, men we can’t spare, for they’re the seed corn of freedom. They died—for what?”
Mr. Steffens said, from his corner: “For the Republic, as you’ve often declared, Arthur. Do you think a nation is an abstract idea, that liberty is a thing apart from man?”
Durant listened to this with surprise. He had never heard that note in Carlson’s voice before, so gloomy and so bitter.
Carlson went on, as if Mr. Steffens had not spoken: “We always fail, throughout history. We’re always defeated, at the last.”
“But we also always triumph, and we always overcome our defeat,” said Mr. Steffens. “Colonel, what do you think of all this?”
Durant hesitated. Once more, he thought of his eerie experience in his office. He felt Carlson watching him with sudden and intent interest. “I’ve often thought as the Chief Magistrate thinks,” he admitted. “And then, tonight—”
“I thought there was a change in you,” said Carlson, with some amusement. “What happened tonight?”
But Durant could say nothing. He drank from his glass, hastily. Mr. Steffens said: “I remember what Christ said: ‘I have compassion on the multitude.’ You’ve never had much compassion, Arthur.”
“Compassion?” Carlson laughed shortly. “Compassion for people who allowed their liberty and sovereignty to die, without a struggle, and with complacency? Who permitted totalitarianism to establish itself in America? Who looked at traitors and murderers and never lifted a hand to destroy them? Who elected, and elected, and elected, year after year, criminals and mountebanks and fools who enslaved them more and more? Who bent their heads meekly under every oppressive law, and did not protest? Who, because of spite and envy and greed, allowed brave men to die? Who knew nothing of States Rights, and raised no outcry when these Rights were abrogated by a malignant and centralized Government? Who regarded the slaughter of Negroes and Jews and other minorities with ugly satisfaction? Who eagerly engaged in war after war, and shouted idiot slogans? Are we to have compassion for the millions of these, who everlastingly overthrow liberty and set tyrants over themselves?”
“‘I have compassion on the multitude,’” repeated Mr. Steffens, in his strong and quiet voice.
“Forever?” asked Carlson.
“Forever,” agreed the other man.
Durant thought of the farmers, the bureaucrats, the MASTS, the soldiers and the Picked Guards and the depraved women and the timid men. He thought of Andreas Zimmer, and all his tribe, and of Hugo Reynolds. He held his glass in both hands and looked down at the yellow puddle of whisky at the bottom. He said, as if speaking to himself: “That’s what I was thinking tonight. And I’m thinking, now, that the good men always hesitate too long and have no strong convictions, but that evil men always act with immediacy and are full of surety. In a way, then, the good men are as guilty of the destruction of a nation as the evil men are. Perhaps they’re even more guilty, for they know what honor is, and virtue and decency, and they do nothing about it.”
“They’re in the minority,” said Carlson.
“No,” said Durant, shaking his head. “The evil men are in the minority. They just know what they want, and they set out to get it, while the good talk or shrug their shoulders or tell themselves they’re helpless. They never are; they’re just weak.”
He looked up at Carlson. “We could goad and goad the people, and they’d do nothing at all, no matter what happened to them, unless they were, the majority of them, waiting and hoping for deliverance. They haven’t any voice of their own. When we give them a voice, they’ll explode into action. Even if there were twice the Minute Men there are now in America, they’d be impotent without the people behind them. And the people will soon be behind them. I once thought that when we oppressed the oppressors, they’d rise up and lead the people, themselves.” He shook his head again. “That is part of the answer, but only a part of it. The people are the answer.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Steffens. He blew a cloud of smoke from his pipe, so that his face was completely hidden for several moments. “Colonel, I was once a soldier, myself. I was a four-star general of what was once the Army of the United States. I—shall I say?—retired. That was twenty years ago. I had seen, over a long period of time, the gradual decay of the people’s liberties, and the numbing of their conscience, and their indifference to the destruction of their nation. I saw the increasing number of intense, fierce-eyed men going about their dedicated business of establishing totalitarianism in America. And I saw them succeed. They did it with such surety and conviction that the people were persuaded. And I saw good men keep silent. I say, as you’ve said, that they were the more guilty, for they knew the end and did nothing to rescue the people. Were they afraid? I think not. I think they were cynical. It’s strange that good men are cynics, and evil men never are.”
He said, to Carlson: “Before the colonel arrived, Arthur, you were speaking of the fact that most of our great natural resources have been blown away in endless wars, and that no scientific discovery of any real good or importance has been announced for over twenty years, with the exception of a few antibiotics, and that the whole business of the world, for decades, has been the business of death and tyranny. Granted that, scientifically and constructively, we’ve not advanced for these twenty years. But the people remain, and when they are free again they’ll make up for the lost time.” Durant had the impression he was smiling. “Not even science exists apart from mankind. It isn’t an abstract. We’ll invent or find new resources, to replace those we’ve expended in wars.”
“Nevertheless, it will take a quarter of a century or more for the world to recover materially and scientifically, and perhaps fifty years for it to recover the morality, stability and peace it had before 1914,” said Carlson. “If we take two steps forward, we take one back.”
Durant observed that Alice had stretched out her hand toward Carlson and that the latter was not even aware that her fingers were pressed comfortingly over his. The young colonel’s deep sentimentality was stirred, and he was irritated that Carlson was so oblivious of all that beauty and love which was being offered him so touchingly. He studied Carlson’s sharp profile, and then he was not so certain that Carlson did not know, for there was a shadow, deeper etched than usual, about his eyes and mouth. So Durant, not hearing the conversation about him, gave more of his attention to Alice Steffens, and he was fascinated by this personification of what a woman was meant to be, all gentleness, sweet strength, loveliness and color. He thought of what the proletarianizing of America had done to its women, how it had deprived them of their particular female glory, had drained them of coloration so that they resembled animated figures made of mud. Ideas, then, he thought, can either make man’s physical body radiant with splendor; and other ideas, gross and vicious and malignant, can blur all its outlines and deform it. The disease of the soul was reflected in the flesh. It was not just a theory of priests; it was an actual phenomenon.
Darkness, ugliness, and deformity could not endure the existence, in the same world with themselves, of light and grandeur and beauty. And as evil things are usually more powerful than the good, Russian and American totalitarianism had set out, each in its own way, to destroy what was intolerable to it and which threatened it. That is why, thought Durant, Russian Communism has never created great artists or exalted scientists, and why, for several decades, America has produced nothing glorious and sublime or heroic. The business of totalitarianism was not only the death of the body but the death of the soul.
Durant became aware of Mr. Steffens’ voice, and now it seemed to him that that voice was no longer just thoughtful and kind, but full of authority. “Man casts a long shadow only at morning and at sunset. He stands in his own shadow at the height of his noon.”
Carlson was walking up and down the room now, as if obscurely agitated, and Durant wished that he had listened these last few minutes. Mr. Steffens was speaking again, and the authority in his voice dominated the room: “If God does not exist, then man is without significance. He is only an animal, and no one need be concerned about him. For only God gives man meaning.”
The Chief Magistrate did not reply. He continued to walk up and down, followed by Alice’s beautiful and anxious eyes. Then he stopped abruptly before Durant. “Your Guards are ready to take you back to the farm,” he said, and his voice was impersonal.
Durant stood up obediently, but annoyed. Why had he been brought to this place at all? Certainly, it had not been a social visit, for Carlson had hardly spoken to him, and Alice had given him only a few vague if charming smiles. It seemed to him that Mr. Steffens, alone, had been interested in him, and that interest had been slight. The business in which they were all engaged was too important for time-wasting, and this evening had been wasted. Durant saluted Carlson, bowed to Mr. Steffens and Alice, and went out, stiffly.
After the departure of Durant, Carlson turned to Mr. Steffens, and smiled. “Well, sir?”
“An excellent young man,” replied the other. “He is all that you have said. And more. You’ve done well, as usual, Arthur. Guard him. I don’t think he is expendable.”
“We can guard him only so far,” said Carlson. “I’ll do my best. Of course, at the end, he must take his own chances with the rest of us.”
Mr. Steffens left his corner and came into the full lamplight and firelight. His thin face was implicit with authority and strength for all the thoughtful kindness of his eyes. He sat down beside his daughter, and took her hand.
“How much does he know?” he asked.
“Only what I’ve told him, and what he has discovered himself.”
“And I imagine that he has discovered a great deal, Arthur. He has a very active and subtle mind, and a contemplative one. The others I have seen tonight are also fine men, but two of them, at least, are too much inclined to take orders and to act on them precisely. The colonel uses his imagination, and he has rebelliousness in him. Good.”
“How do my men compare with the men in the other Sections, sir?”
“There are excellent men in every Section.” Mr. Steffens smiled,
and the worn furrows in his face became less pronounced. “Don’t try to get me to flatter you too much, Arthur.” He became grave. “I think, before long, that we can give the signal. More death, I’m afraid, but it has to be done. We’ll win; of that, I’m certain.”
He looked at Carlson. “Arthur, I must ask you again not to consider martyrdom on your part the only solution. In the coming years, you could be invaluable.”
Carlson laughed a little. “The people must have a devil. Remember, they’re simple-minded. It would confuse them to have their devil suddenly become a saint. They’d begin to doubt.”
Alice turned very white. She stood up, resolutely, and held out her hands to Carlson. “Arthur!”
He looked at her hands, and hesitated. Then he took them, gently, and said: “Alice, I want you to withdraw as local head of the Department of Women’s Welfare. I want you to disappear. Go into hiding, before it’s too late.”
“Why?” she demanded, and held his hands tighter.
He hesitated again, and said: “It would make me happier. Because I’d like to remember, at the last, that you’re still alive, and safe. I’d like to think that you’ll marry, when it’s all over, and that your children will rebuild America.”
She said, oblivious of her father: “I want those children to be ours, my dear.” Tears began to run from her eyes and over her cheeks.
Carlson shook his head. “That’s impossible, Alice. I’ve told you that so often. What I must do, I must do. There’s no room in my life, and never has been, for the things other men have. You know that; you knew that from the beginning.”
Mr. Steffens got to his feet and put his arm about his daughter, who had covered her face with her hands. “My darling,” he said, “I am beginning to understand. Arthur would not have been able to accomplish what he has accomplished had he not been the man he is. Some men are inexorably born to heroism and martyrdom, and nothing can change that plan. Let him go.”